Inhaled Corticosteroids Won't Prevent Kids' Asthma

But the medication can help control airway disease, research finds.

By Serena Gordon
HealthDay Reporter
Thursday, May 24, 2007; 12:00 AM

Copyright © 2007 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved.

THURSDAY, May 24 (HealthDay News) -- While inhaled corticosteroid medications are a mainstay of effective asthma treatment, they can't prevent the disease from occurring or recurring in high-risk children, new research found.

Two presentations Wednesday at the American Thoracic Society 2007 International Conference in San Francisco included an additional year of information from previous research. The studies confirmed that youngsters given inhaled corticosteroids may do well while they're taking the medications. But the drugs' beneficial effects wear off soon after they're stopped, and they don't appear to have any long-term effects on the progression of asthmatic disease.

"The good news is that you probably don't have to use steroids to prevent the progression of asthma, but inhaled corticosteroids do work when you need them," said one of the study's authors, Dr. Wayne Morgan, a professor of pediatrics and physiology and chief of pediatric pulmonary medicine at the University of Arizona at Tucson. "Inhaled corticosteroids control, but don't prevent, asthma."

Morgan's presentation, and that of his colleague Dr. Theresa Guilbert, assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, revisited a clinical trial called PEAK (Prevention of Early Asthma in Kids). In this trial, 285 children at high risk of developing asthma were randomly selected to receive preventive treatment with an inhaled corticosteroid twice daily for two years, or a placebo. The third year of the study included no treatment. For the fourth year -- the year included in the new presentations -- the children's care was returned solely to their own physicians. Therefore, treatment varied and reflected what's going on in real-world clinical practice.

Morgan's presentation focused on specific physiological measures of lung function. During the study treatment period, these measures indicated that the children in the treatment arm were, in fact, taking the medication.

"At the end of the second observation period, there was no difference between the groups," Morgan said.